Pete’s Wish List for Combat Warriors. Perhaps Some Lessons for Poliicng as Well?

I love this wish list by Pete Turner. It fits policing as well, as what I am teaching cops this year Procedural Justice and Combatting Violent Extremism. His take on emotional verse cultural intelligence is spot on and describes as well what we police must consider and how we police must be more deliberate in our policing efforts, to be more effective.

Cultural intelligence is related to emotional intelligence, but it picks up where emotional intelligence leaves off. A person with high emotional intelligence grasps what makes us human and at the same time what makes each of us different from one another. A person with high cultural intelligence can somehow tease out of a person’s or group’s behavior those features that would be true of all people and all groups, those peculiar to this person or this group, and those that are neither universal nor idiosyncratic. The vast realm that lies between those two poles is culture.

I also love Pete's example of the ISIS influenced attack on Peir 39; The US military has made large-scale, state on state fighting so expensive and ponderous, none of its adversaries choose to fight that way anymore.

Consider the Everitt Aaron Jameson foiled Christmas attack on Pier 39 in Dec 2017. He says he was inspired by ISIS saying in an affidavit, he’d “do anything for ‘the cause,’” We can dismiss this, but Mr. Jameson is not alone in answering ISIS’ call to action. Whether ISIS has direct control or not, Jameson responded to stimuli that lead to a potential conflict. ISIS use affects to create an effect. Did it work this time? YES!

ISIS is using social media to influence and radicalize people here in American soil. The FBI calls it Cyber Jihad! They use ideology, personal and sociopolitical views as well as group and community or a sense of belonging and turn it on these folks who are browsing their social media sites. Some are vulnerable for many different reasons and they get reeled in and then act! Crazy stuff!

Affects dominate Effects. Since the population IS the fight in modern conflict, creating the desired affects is essential for success. Affect as a noun in Psychology and Philosophy provide our guide. Simply, how does the civil population respond to stimuli and which belligerent is creating its desired affects?

Modern war is forcing the US and her allied forces to rethink how they approach conflict. A large portion of military thinkers focus on the lethal side of the combat equation, and they should. Conversely, people like myself, look at the non-lethal and wonder where’s the doctrine, the attention to detail and the standards that are present when we train for the basic combat tasks? We don’t train like THEY fight and that is a problem.

"One who does not thoroughly know the harm from employing the military cannot thoroughly know they advantage from employing the military." ~Sun Tzu

The same holds true for modern policing. We must train for and understand how our strategy operations and tactics affect the moral, mental and physical dimensions of conflict and crisis. The skillful recognize how harm can bring advantage, how the adversaries advantage may not bring harm, how easily these two can invert. By seeing the interdependence of advantage and harm, self and other, is how we move to winning at low cost. Be sure to check out Pete's whole post here: